By Joseph Morales

The NYC Subway System is one of the most vast and most used subway systems in the entire world, with 472 subway stations serving millions of riders daily. The MTA’s commuter rails are also similarly impressive, with 250 rail stations serving hundreds of thousands of riders from New York’s suburbs as well as certain parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens.

                  Besides being able to get to many parts of NYC and the NY region without a car, the sheer number of stations allows for the ability for hundreds of unique, elegant, and inspiring artworks to be on display throughout the subway system as well as the Metro-North and LIRR. Large station complexes such as Grand Central Terminal tend to have many pieces of art, as the size of these complexes provides artists with plenty of possible canvases. The transit system’s artwork generally consists of various forms, including mosaics, terra cotta, and more.

While the artwork in the transit system can make one truly feel as if they are in an art museum, the lack of explanations as to what the pieces were designed to portray is one aspect of a museum that the subway system has noticeably tended to lack. This is something that MTA Arts and Design, the subsidiary that commissions artwork for placement in the transit system, has addressed by launching an art guide on the Bloomberg Connects App under the title MTA Arts and Design. This guide allows riders to look up any art piece from the subway, the LIRR, or Metro-North and learn more about the artist, the materials used to make the art piece, and the artist’s motivations behind the work. Riders can also use the map feature to look up art pieces they might see on their trips before they travel.

               The guide also provides self-guided tours for particularly artsy areas of the system, such as the Second Avenue Subway, the elevated stations on the Astoria line, and the Mainline of the LIRR. There is even a walking tour of the City of Mount Vernon available that includes artwork that was installed on multiple road bridges over the Metro-North tracks that the MTA recently replaced.

                   So far, the app has taught me about the meaning of several prominent art pieces in the subway system. Some of the artwork is themed based on the station’s surroundings, such as Sandy Litchfield’s  Forestation Syncopation at the recently renovated New Hyde Park LIRR station and A Day in Parkchester as seen at the Parkchester subway station in The Bronx. Others are made to share completely different messages, such as the Railrider’s Throne piece at the 116th St-Columbia University station in Upper Manhattan, where the artist Michelle Greene wanted riders to feel a sense of humor in the station as well as further the “subway founders’ design mission of making the subway “a pleasant and hospitable place.” Another art piece, Forte(Quarropas); Blue Rails at the White Plains MNR station uses the “..artist’s signature stylized abstract forms…” along with “deep vibrant blue” in a movement that “references rail travel, the history of the city and its exuberant energy.”

                   It’s astonishing how much we can learn from the artwork we see as we commute on a daily basis. Hopefully, the new guides from MTA Art and Design will not only help people appreciate the artwork they see but also understand the thoughtful and inspiring people and messages behind them.

Works Cited

Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “Subway and bus ridership for 2021 – New York City Transit.” MTA, 2022, https://new.mta.info/agency/new-york-city-transit/subway-bus-ridership-2021. Accessed 7 October 2023.

​​Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “Long Island Rail Road.” MTA, https://new.mta.info/agency/long-island-rail-road. Accessed 7 October 2023.

Untapped New York. “10 Fascinating Secrets of the Metro-North Railroad – Untapped New York.” Untapped Cities, 8 October 2020, https://untappedcities.com/2020/10/08/secrets-metro-north-railroad/. Accessed 7 October 2023.

MTA Arts & Design, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. MTA Arts & Design. 2023. Accessed 7 October 2023.